THE HOUSES
They dined at six o'clock, and after dinner they sat on deck in the
gathering dark making plans for the morrow.
The map of Hyalos, which they had studied so often, was impressed on
their minds so that they had no need to refer to it. Roughly, and for
their purpose, the town of Hyalos might be described as framed around
three streets and the market-place or agora. The theatre, presumably
outside the walls, did not come into the plan of the town.
The three streets, as named by Isaac Behrens, were the Street of the
Winged Victory running north, the Street of the Winds running east, and
the Street of Hermes running south.
The town was roughly half-moon shaped, the curve to the east.
Behrens, who must have carried a photographic camera in his brain, had
drawn his map with the most loving minuteness, showing all sorts of
little by-streets intersecting the main avenues. Amongst the notes on
the back of the map was one which read: "Search mainly houses adjoining
agora end Victory, Hermes, St. of Winds."
That evidently referred to treasure.
It was obvious enough that whatever works of art Hyalos might
disclose would be found in the better-class houses adjoining the big
streets. But why did Isaac specify the agora end of the streets? What
antiquarian or art-lover instinct prompted him? Who could tell?
"To-morrow," said Sam, "I'll bring the ship along and we'll anchor
right over one of those houses. The drift is nothing. I won't use the
anchor--just a couple of ballast pigs at the end of the cable will
hold her steady--and we can work the air pump from deck. She has a low
freeboard, and will be just as handy to use as the boat and a lot more
comfortable."
"Glastonbury knows what to look for," said Bobby. "I've given him a
course of instruction. Pretty simple, too. Everything moveable he
can lay hands on, and especially anything in the way of figures or
heads made of stone. There's no use in talking of objects of art to
Glastonbury, but he understands the meaning of figures."
"It's nothing of a job as far as he's concerned," said Sam. "It's only
a six- or seven-fathom drop into one of those courtyards, and the
Sooloo pearl divers will do seventeen fathoms without a diving dress."
"Tell me," said Martia. "I only know about diving that the diver has an
air-pipe to give him air which has to be pumped to him. Well, suppose
we lower Glastonbury down into one of those courtyards."
"We don't lower him," said Sam--"he goes down himself."
"Well, he's in the courtyard, then he goes under the colonnade and
into the room of the house. Isn't there danger of the air-pipe getting
tangled round something, or bent, so's he can't breathe?"
"Not with a diver who knows his work," replied the other. "Those houses
are nothing to Glastonbury. Why, he's often gone down to a sunk ship
and into it, into the cabins and places, and that off the English
coast, where the water's as thick as pea-soup compared with the water
here."
"How will he see when he gets into the house?"
"Oh, he's got an electric torch. We lower a net-bag with a sinker in
it--I've got two in the sail-room. He puts what he finds in the bag and
we haul it up, so he hasn't to come to the surface every time he finds
anything."
"And how does he come up when he's finished. Do we pull him?"
"No, he comes up a rope; or if he's in a hurry he just shuts the escape
valve in his helmet and the air balloons out his dress, and he rises
like a bubble."
Martia sat for a moment in silence. The moon was just lifting, a great
silver moon lighting the bay and the sea beyond, silver-faced yet
rosy-fingered, for where she touched the bunt of a badly stowed sail
and the white planking of the deck the light showed in it a tinge of
rose.
"There's one thing I haven't thought of till now," said she. "Are we
doing right in keeping this place a secret from the world?"
"How do you mean?" said Bobby.
"I mean this is one of the wonders of the world, like Pompeii. It is a
Pompeii, covered with water instead of lava. Well, oughtn't we to talk
about it?"
"Why?" asked Bobby.
"So that people may see it; archæologists and people."
"I don't see why we should make ourselves advertising agents for this
place," said Sam. "Anyhow, I don't see there's any 'ought' in it.
You've come out here to scrape up statues and things for old Behrens,
and from what you say the Greek Government might lay claim to them if
they knew. No, keep it dark. Suppose you did tell? Even if the Greeks
didn't make trouble, what good would it do? You'd have shiploads
of beastly tourists coming here, that would be all, and fusty old
archæologists. The world wouldn't be a bit better for it."
"Anyhow," said Bobby, "it's always up to us to give information about
the place. We could do it in a year or so, anonymously: write a letter
to the _Times_ or something of that sort."
They sat whilst the moon rose higher, lighting the island, the bay and
the reefs; the girl trying to fancy shiploads of tourists breaking
into this beautiful desolation--tourists come to "do" Hyalos. Her mind
refused the idea. The city that time had hidden so carefully appealed
against it.
"Take what you will of my treasures," it said, "but spare me that."
They were up an hour after sunrise next morning, and, after tea and
biscuits served on deck by Bowler, they started to get the anchor up
and the auxiliary engine going.
It was good to be alive. A tepid sea-scented breeze ruffled the bay and
brought a faint whisper from the reef where the foam traces showed in
lines of gold. Gulls filled the air and followed them as the _Lorna_,
with the anchor up and the engine going, turned to the helm and glided
eastward, whilst the hands forward were getting ready the ballast pigs
to serve as anchors and Glastonbury, on his knees, was going over the
diving gear which he had spread out on deck. The great brass helmet,
the lead sinkers, the boots so heavy that they were difficult to lift,
the air tube and signal line, the electric torch--all and each of
these he was inspecting with the care of a man whose life depended on
perfection of detail. The pump had been rigged on the starboard side,
and, having finished with the gear, he turned to the pump, overhauling
it, whilst Sam, forward and leaning over the side, was giving
directions to the steersman.
They passed over the theatre, then the market-place showed its wide
surface glimmering up through the breezed water.
Sam ordered the engine to be shut off, and the _Lorna_, gliding with
the way on her, stole towards the advancing houses, whose walls showed
now like a submarine cloud, now more solidly.
"Ready with the anchor there!" cried Sam.
Martia, standing by the steersman, watched breathlessly whilst the
fellows handling the two great ballast pigs attached to the cable got
ready to heave them over.
Then came the voice: "Port--steady so." And a moment later: "Damn,
we've overrun it! Put her back a stroke or two."
The little propeller flopped and was still. The _Lorna_ receded
slightly, ceased to move, and then began gently to drift.
"Over with the anchor!" The order came sharp as a pistol-shot; and on
the splash Martia came forward and looked down.
Sam had manœuvred the _Lorna_ right over the courtyard of a house on
whose tessellated pavement the ballast pigs were resting: seven and a
half fathoms of cable were out and the bubbles were still coming up.
"Will she hold?" asked Glastonbury, who was leaning over beside Sam.
"Sure," said Sam. "But let her swing first. That weight will hold her
with this move of current, but we'll soon see."
The _Lorna_ was shifting her position, coming round gently bow on
to the almost imperceptible drift. Then she hung motionless to the
tautened cable.
"She holds all right," said Sam. "But, if you like, I'll put another
anchor out."
"No, I reckon that's enough," said the diver. "If she did drift them
pigs would catch up against the roof there"--he pointed to the roof of
the colonnade. "House you call it. Why, it's more like a darn cistern
without a lid."
"Well, that's how they built in the old days," replied the other. "And
now, you'll remember all I told you. Under that roof-place you'll find
the rooms. Take your time over it and don't be in a hurry. Nab anything
you can find and fix in your head all the details."
Glastonbury turned from the side, and then, indifferently, as though he
were going down in Poole Harbour to free an anchor-chain or fix a pile,
he began to dress.
Martia watched. It was the most exciting moment of her life. What might
happen to him? What might he not find? No treasure hunt could have more
thrills in it than this search--not for base gold but for that which
no gold could create. This was the moment of moments towards which all
their labours had tended.
She watched him getting into the canvas suit, and the boots weighing
sixteen pounds each being put on his feet, and the lead sinkers on his
shoulders; the great helmet with the front glass open put on his head
and fixed, with the air-tube attached.
Church and Bowler were at the pump, and they set it going.
"Right," said Glastonbury; and the helmet was closed to a hiss of air
from the escape valve.
Then she watched as slowly, with the movements of a paralysed elephant,
he turned to the side, got over, and began to crawl down the ladder.
Oh, if anything should happen to the pump, to the air-tube! She had
never seen a diver going down before, and the thought clutched her so
that for a moment she did not dare to look. When she did, leaning
over beside Bobby, she saw on the tessellated pavement beneath her the
diver like a horned monster, a long stream of bubbles ascending from
his head. He was standing erect and seemed looking round him, then,
followed by the pipe and the signal line, he vanished beneath the
colonnade roof.
The clanking of the pump, slow and rhythmical, filled the air,
answering to the voices of the far-off gulls.
"Now over with the net," said Sam; and the net-bag with its sinker went
down, resting on the courtyard floor. As it did so a fish, blue and
grey, and big as a twenty-pound salmon, darted from the shadows where
the diver had vanished. He had frightened it out, and it fled hither
and thither, scared by the ship above, and disappearing at last under
the colonnade roof at the northern end.
A minute passed, two, three, four--then the figure in the helmet, the
air bubbles gaily spraying upwards from it, reappeared; he was carrying
something.
He bent by the net-bag, then rose and passed off again into the
shadows. Bobby and Sam between them hauled up the bag, dripping from
the sea.
A Greek vase showed through the meshes of the bag, a vase of red
glazed earthenware, exquisite in shape and pictured in black with men
reclining at a banquet and girl flute-players playing double flutes.
It stood nearly eighteen inches in height in the light of the sun that
it had not seen for two thousand years, and Martia, kneeling before
it, could not speak. She lifted it in both her hands to pour the water
from it, when out tumbled a little figure that seemed made of crystal:
a winged Eros, fat as a Roman Cupid, standing on its hands on a base
of crystal, its feet in the air, turning a somersault. Some child's
toy, possibly, dropped into the jar by the child or by its mother for
safe keeping. Bowler, who had turned his head for a moment as he worked
at the pump, saw this thing as it stood on the deck where Martia had
placed it beside the jar, and laughed--a single laugh like a knock on
a board. Then, without a word, he went on with his pumping. The humour
of the thing had kept through all the centuries, and the artist had not
worked in vain.
Meanwhile, Sam had flung the net over again, but it did not come up
again immediately. Glastonbury, going and coming, was collecting things
in a dump to save time. Then they began to come up so rapidly that the
receivers had only time to disengage them from the bag.
Vases like the first; shallow drinking-cups, all exquisite in
form, unbroken, and pictured with feasts, battles, and ceremonies,
flute-girls and girls at play, men sacrificing animals on altars, and
men putting on armour for the fight; a bracelet of metal, heavy as
gold; a cup of black metal, possibly silver, and carved with figures;
a sea nymph of marble astride a marble dolphin, the whole not over
ten inches high; and a disc thrower in marble like the discobolus of
the Museum, except in size, for the plinth was not bigger than a soup
plate.
All these things the collector of antiques, seven fathoms below the
keel, sent up to be received dripping from the sea; and all these
things, to the value of thousands of pounds, stood on the deck-planking
in the burning sun, of little interest to any but Martia and Bobby. Sam
had talked of a crew of blind men; in reality he was nearly as blind as
his crew, as far as these things were concerned.
Then Glastonbury came up, reporting a clean sweep. With helmet off and
cigarette in his lips he gave a sketch of the rooms he had entered.
"More like cells in a police-station than decent rooms," said
Glastonbury--"all but the big room I got them things from," pointing to
the statuary.
It seemed that the largest of the jars had come from the big room, and
the rest, from a room that might have been a kitchen. There were stone
benches but no trace of any wooden furniture: that would no doubt have
been eaten by the sea ages ago.
Well, there on the deck was the result of the sacking of a single
house, and if all the other houses in the better-class streets of
Hyalos were to give up an equal amount of treasure, it seemed to Sam
that they would want the _Mauretania_ to bring the stuff back to
England. He said so.
The remark did not trouble Martia. Her mind was already in trouble.
They had clean forgotten packing material. Her woman's instinct for
crockery had brought this fact suddenly into her mind.
Those lovely jars, which she would not have allowed a servant to
handle! How were they to be carried unbroken to England? The statuary
was all right: it would stand rough usage--but the jars? Where was the
straw and where were the hampers that ought to have been provided?
She asked all this kneeling on the deck beside her treasures.
"We can shove them in the sail-room," said Sam. "Put them close enough
together and they won't carry away."
"Shove them in the sail-room? Don't you know that each one ought to
be wrapped round with straw and then straw put between them? It is my
fault. I ought to have thought of this. But then how was I to know? I
never imagined finding things so fragile as these."
"Beg your pardon, miss, but you are talkin' about straw," said Bowler.
"Yes."
"Well, there's enough grass growin' ashore to make all the straw you
want. It's all there bar the cutting."
"We've nothing to cut it with," said Bobby.
"There are knives enough, and we can sharpen them," replied Sam. "We'll
start in to-morrow, and when we've cut enough we'll leave it to dry in
the sun. Meanwhile, you can stow those things in the sail-room; there's
no roll or pitch here to harm them."
They went below to get some food, and two hours later, the anchor being
got in, Sam jockeyed the _Lorna_ over the courtyard of the next house.
Glastonbury was down five minutes. He sent nothing up; he came up
himself with the report that the place was stripped. Stone couches, a
chair of marble too heavy to be moved, and a few scraps of corroded
metal were all the things he found.
A depressing result after the first glorious discoveries.
The inhabitants had either removed their things or had cared nothing
for objects of art and adornment.
It was Sam who cheered the others up as they sat in the cabin that
night discussing matters.
"There's no use in thinking on a job like this," said Sam. "We've begun
well, anyhow. I don't care whether these Hyalites cleared out before
the sea took them or were swallowed whole. It stands to reason that one
house can't be full of things and all the rest empty. We've just got
to go ahead and go slow and methodical, and to-morrow there'll be no
diving. We'll land and cut grass--and pray for fine weather."